At 11:34 AM 06/13/2000 -0800, Alain wrote:
>[Alain] In my example of this morning, it was not mainly because French
>was in 5th position that I was the most upset, it is because I was in a
>hurry -- that was last Tuesday -- and that I had to wait for the vocal
>explanations for many minutes while French was the second most-used
>language in this hotel (the others in 2nd, 3rd and 4th position were, for
>those interested [remember that we are in Toronto, not in Tokyo nor
>Cairo]: Japanese [nihon-go], Spanish [español], Arabic [arabiya] [sorry if
>I made a mistakes in spelling, that is what I heard, and I was as
>attentive as I could). Even Spanish should have come before Japanese in
>North America. It is a matter of common sense. But I was under the
>impression that those who took the decision for the order in languages at
>this hotel were vicious. Not very good indeed for their customer base...
>The guy who did that should be reprimanded... Anyway they risk to lose me...

As I noted in a prior comment, since I assume you were in your room at the
time, it should have offered YOU French as option 1 (since that could be
set at check in time). For a Voice Mail system in a HOTEL, the lack of a
way to flag preferred language on a per-room basis is poor design. I do
computer program design for a living and as an example of this principle, I
designed an ATM system that could display in a number of different
languages BUT based on the card used would default to the correct language
prior to offering the "What Language do you want" screen.